State exam asks N.J. 3rd graders to write essay on secret they had kept

Star-Ledger fileElementary school students work in this file photo. Some third graders were asked to write an essay revealing a secret on a state exam.

Is it okay to ask a child to reveal a secret?

Richard Goldberg doesn’t think so.

Goldberg, the father of 8-year old twin boys, was dismayed to learn his third-grade sons were asked to write an essay about a secret they had and why it was hard to keep.

The unusual question, which Goldberg called "entirely inappropriate" was on the standardized tests given to public school students in the third through eighth grade every spring.

He said he first learned about the essay when he questioned his sons about the difficulty of the annual test, which they had been preparing for at their Marlboro elementary school.

"They both looked at me and said ‘the secrets question was really hard,’" Goldberg said. "I told them ‘Wow, that’s a difficult question,’ but in my head I was thinking, ‘How did this outrageous question get on the test in the first place.’"

Roughly 4,000 students in 15 districts across the state answered the question, which Department of Education spokesman Justin Barra said was being "field-tested" during this year’s administration of the New Jersey Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (NJ ASK).

The question will not, however, appear on any future versions of the test, Barra said.

"We’ve looked at this question in light of concerns raised by parents, and it is clear that this is not an appropriate question for a state test," Barra said.

Although students’ answers to field questions do not count toward their scores on the test, Barra would not reveal the school districts where the question was asked or the exact wording of the question.

Bob Schaeffer, public education director of Fair Test, an organization that advocates for transparenmost standardized tests more than a decade ago, called the ‘secrets’ question "idiotic."

"What if the deep dark secret is molestation, or that your parents are about to get divorced? What kind of mind set is a child left with for the rest of the exam?" Schaeffer said. "This kind of serious error can make standardized tests even less useful than they normally are."

Questions that dealt with emotional issues generally were eliminated from standarized tests more than a decade ago, he said.

The question did not seem troubling to Susan Engel, a lecturer in psychology and director of the teaching program at Williams University. Asking about secrets is a good way to get children to write, she said, and it’s unlikely such young children would bare their souls.

"I think by and large, kids are not going to tell a real secret," she said.

Goldberg said he has been in contact with other parents in the neighborhood through Facebook and many are also dismayed. He said his sons were challenged by the question because they wanted to answer honestly, but also did not want to reveal something that would get them in trouble.

"My one boy wrote about a broken ceiling fan that Dad knew about, buy maybe Mom did not," Goldberg said. "Other parents told me their kids just made stuff up."

Field questions like this one must go through a "several-step process" of vetting and review by a testing expert, a content specialist and a panel of teachers before the question appears on an exam, Barra said.

As standardized tests are becoming a bigger part of education — New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, among others, wants the results to be a factor in teachers’ pay — the exams themselves are being increasingly scrutinized..

Last month, New York education officials said they would not score six multiple-choice questions about a passage from an eighth-grade reading exam about a hare and a talking pineapple. Parents and teachers complained that the passage, and the questions about it, did not make sense.

And later, they acknowledged finding errors on math tests given to fourth- and eighth-graders.